


In For A Penny

by frommybookbook



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-29
Updated: 2016-03-29
Packaged: 2018-05-29 23:47:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6399148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frommybookbook/pseuds/frommybookbook
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Steve’s grandpa always told him to keep a penny in his pocket, you never know when you’ll need to make a phone call. </em>
</p><p>  <em>(Better still, keep a whole roll of them, you’ll never be beat in a fist fight.) </em></p><p>  <em>But it’s 1942, and a phone call costs a nickel now.</em></p><p>Steve Rogers and Daniel Sousa are two sides of the same coin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In For A Penny

Here's the thing about a spinning coin: in the end, it doesn't matter how long it spins or where it lands. There are only two outcomes. Heads or tails.

Funny thing about coins. They don't always land where you want them to. They spin and spin until they're ready to stop.

Especially when life keeps flicking them along.

\--

Bucky’s always been better than Steve, faster, stronger. He can outrun the rest of the neighborhood kids when they play tag, can always get away from bullies (though he always comes back for Steve, having another asthma attack). He uses his dimples to get Mrs. Rosenthal at the deli to give him a large milkshake with his hoagie instead of the small he pays for. Everything comes so easily to Bucky that Steve can’t fault him when he gets a bit cocky.

After all, who but Bucky could get Joe DeMarco to fall for the old “heads, I win, tails, you lose” trick? 

But Bucky remains loyal to Steve. On more than one occasion, he’s “twisted” his ankle dodging Jimmy Davis so he gets tagged while Steve catches his breath - and he never, ever tags Steve. He always shares his milkshake.

"Flip for it, OK?" Bucky asks, when he fails to convince Steve to take the rap for breaking the kitchen window.

Steve rolls his eyes. Bucky thinks everything in life can be solved with the flip of a coin. Who bats first? Who picks which radio show to listen to?

But Steve can't help but blurt, "Heads!"

Bucky punches Steve's shoulder. "Ma won't wallop you, you're not her kid."

Not every question in life is binary. Not every problem can be called on a coin toss. But that’s a lesson for old men, not young boys.

\--

Twice a month their mother cleans house for Mrs. Vanderbeek on the west side of town; the rich side. So long as the weather’s nice and they promise not to step a toe inside Mrs. Vanderbeek’s flower beds, Daniel and Thomas can go with their mother to play in the expansive backyard.

“It’s your turn to hide," Thomas orders. "I’ll come find you.”

“No," whines Daniel, not even a year younger than his brother. "I hid last time, Tommy. You hide.”

“Let’s flip for it,” Thomas suggests, fishing a penny from his pocket. Before Daniel can ask where his brother got the shiny, new coin, Thomas is flicking it into the air. "Heads or tails?"

It's hard to see the penny against the blue of the sky.

"You have to call it," Thomas chides, snatching the coin from the grass and flipping it again.

\--

Steve’s grandpa always told him to keep a penny in his pocket, you never know when you’ll need to make a phone call. 

(Better still, keep a whole roll of them, you’ll never be beat in a fist fight.) 

But it’s 1942, and a phone call costs a nickel now. 

Still plenty of uses for a penny, though. Tonight Steve's practicing his sleight of hand, dropping it behind one fist while it looks balled up in the other. Not that Bucky's paying attention. He's too busy making eyes at a blonde by the bar

"Why don't you ask her to dance?" Steve asks. His beer's getting warm. He's not drinking it very fast.

Bucky snatches the penny. "Make you a bet. Heads, I ask her to dance. Tails, you buy the next round."

_ Heads, I win, tails, you lose. _

Steve chuckles. “You’re on, Buck, but only if I get to flip the coin.”

The coin lands in a spin. Round and round and round it goes, until it’s just a blur on the rough top of the table.

\--

For a while, they work side by side in the shipyards, just like their dad, just like their uncle. Then one day Thomas announces he's moving to Boston.

He has a plan, he tells Daniel. He'll get a job doing construction by day and go to school at night. He'll be an engineer. He'll finally ask Eva to marry him. No more smelling like salt and sweat all the time. Daniel laughs and calls his brother crazy.

Then the war comes.

Laborers and engineering students are exempt from the draft, except you have to be one or the other. A part-time lineman and part-time student doesn’t count for squat, and so Thomas has no choice. But Daniel does. He'd grown up taller than his brother, more handsome, always with a new pretty girl on his arm. He could have bided his time in the shipyards, but he up and enlisted.

"Why?" asks Thomas as they leave the recruiting office. He's on leave for the weekend.

Daniel shrugs. "I want to see some of the world, or at least something outside Massachusetts. I thought you'd understand."

Thomas doesn't. After all, he tells Daniel, the only thing he's seen since he got drafted is the ass-end of Jersey. 

Eventually they both ship out. Different theaters, different wars. 

They lose sight of the coin entirely, blinded by the sun in their eyes. All they can do now is wait, and listen, for it to hit the grass.

\--

Bucky would think it's a terrible idea, crawling inside some metal tube so some scientist - German, no less! - can pump him full of homemade snake oil? 

But Bucky isn't here. Last Steve heard, his friend was somewhere in France, but it's been weeks since Bucky’s written. 

So Steve agrees to be Erskine's lab rat.

Everything's going to plan  _ (Peggy Carter's fingers on his toned chest)  _ when the shot rings out. 

He can hear Bucky's voice in his ear as his feet pound the pavement. "For what, Steve? So you can join me on the front? So you can die in Europe like your pa?"

If possible, the coin is picking up speed. Spinning faster and faster, but never moving from its center.

\--

Daniel may have signed up to go, but he wasn't naive: he knew war wouldn't be a picnic. He's had heat rash and frostbite and let an Army doc slap a bandage on a still-bleeding shrapnel wound so he could fight on. He saw good men die. And that was all before his battalion got pinned behind enemy lines. 

After? Well, that was so much worse. 

Daniel remembers a flash of red, white, and blue. Captain America's shield. A big, ridiculous bowler hat on top of an even bigger and more ridiculous mustache.

They march into Belgium bone-tired but feeling their luck was about to change. 

But there's another flash, this one all red. It's sharp and brings nothing but pain. 

He wakes up three days later with an ache in a leg he no longer has.

The coin's still spinning, but when Daniel reaches out to grab it, the wind picks up.

\--

If Bucky’s being honest, it was always a little good for his ego to have Steve around. Don't misunderstand him: he loves Steve like a brother. But it never hurt to know he was going to get the girl, win the fight, be the leader. 

Except now, Steve's the leader, and he's damn good at it. Steve's got the girl too, and not just any girl (though he could have any girl he wanted with that new jawline of his), he's got Peggy. Beautiful, smart, could-knock-the-Kaiser-out-with-a-left-hook Peggy.

"Sir, yes, sir," Bucky tells General Phillips when he's told to go find the captain. He smirks when he reaches Peggy's tent because where she leads Steve usually follows. "Captain."

"Buck," says Steve, and he blushes. 

Oh, how the tables have turned. 

But just when it looks like the coin is going to fall over, it gets flicked again. After all, there’s nothing in the rules that says it can’t be nudged along.

\--

Daniel has a habit of saying, "Sure, why not?” when trouble comes knocking. How many times had his older brother dragged him out of a bar by the collar, panting, “For once in your life, could you try saying, ‘No thanks, I’ll pass this time?’”

Then Thomas would spit out a mouthful of blood because where one brother went, the other invariably followed.

But it was Daniel who volunteered for dangerous missions and Daniel who landed the coveted position of reconnaissance scout.

Which made him mostly to blame for losing his leg. 

_ Thomas was dead.  _

So when a man in a smart black suit showed up at Daniel's bedside and left him with a business card, saying to call the number when he got discharged, Daniel agreed. Because what was his alternative? Going back to his parents’ house? Living off an Army pension for the next 40 years? He might have married Eva, his brother's widow, if he'd come back whole and healthy. But a happy life with a wife and a few kids is no longer in the cards for Daniel. He's not going to saddle any girl, much less Eva, with 'til death do us part, so he takes the card and the man in the black suit leaves.

A nurse teaches him how to pin up his pant leg and later how to walk on his prosthesis. He tricks himself into thinking he's just like any other veteran until the day he walks into a diner and gets a standing ovation. 

A coin flip only settles a debate when sides are assigned. Otherwise, it’s just a piece of change.

\--

Steve's made a lot of choices in his life, some good, some bad. He used to pick a lot of fights he couldn't win, to prove what? To whom? He put his faith in a scientist brave enough to go against his country, and that was a good choice. Steve said no to being a performing monkey and started helping people, as Erskine always intended. That was a good choice, too. And deciding to crash a plane to prevent the deaths of thousands? Well, it wasn't a good choice, but it was the right call.

"A week next Saturday, at The Stork Club," says Peggy, choking back tears.

"You've got it," Steve replies, instead of the three little words he should say.

He regrets not telling her he loves her as he puts the Valkyrie down.

A tabletop needs a little friction to keep a coin going. Too smooth and it can’t stay upright, too many divots and it skitters, careening over the edge.

\--

Life with the SSR is never dull, and in that respect it’s everything he left home for in the first place. Daniel likes that LA is nothing like the East Coast. He's made it to chief, he's got the respect of the men under him, and now he even has Peggy, currently wiggling in his lap.

"Good point," he says, and she's kissing him again.

Daniel still isn't sure why he chose to goad her (except he never was any good at saying no to trouble), but he can't argue with the outcome. He hadn't thought this possible, not even when she showed up outside his office softly saying, "Hello, Chief." Working alongside her again was as exciting and exhilarating as he remembered. Even though he was technically a supervisor now - but not  _ her _ supervisor - he still loved being in the thick of it with her, chasing leads and breaking rules. It’s stupid, and it's risky, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. 

The chair creaks. His prosthesis pinches. He grimaces into her kiss, but he can't bear to move her.

Until, finally, he has to. "Sorry," he tells her, but as soon as he's shifted her weight to his left leg, she's kissing him again.

Eventually, every coin stops spinning. With a little luck, you'll call it right.

\--

He knew the minute he woke up that something was wrong. The WAC at the foot of his bed wasn’t in the proper uniform, and he already knew the final score of the game on the radio.

Every day since then, Steve’s woken up with the same feeling that something is just a little off. New York in 2012 is just a little too loud, a little too flashy to feel like home. It’s like someone took the world that he knew and tilted it, just a few degrees, just enough to make it feel like Steve’s always walking uphill. 

So far, all of Steve’s days have been the same. He gets up, takes a regulation shower in the biggest bathroom he’s ever seen, and then tries to remember how to make coffee in the machine with more buttons than a HYDRA comms panel. Then it’s on to the gym. There, he can convince himself it’s still 1945. With every punch to the bag, he can almost believe that any minute, Dum Dum is going to tell him to suit up, they’ve got a mission, that Bucky is going to mock his form, that Peggy’s going to punch back, telling him to protect his face. 

But the only person who comes looking for Steve is Director Fury. Every day Steve thinks a little more about S.H.I.E.L.D.’s offer to join another mission, about starting a new routine, but he just can’t do it yet. 

“Trying to get me back in the world?” Steve calls over his shoulder, unable to look Fury in the eye.   
His reply comes without hesitation. “Trying to save it.”

Then Fury’s gone, as silently as he’d come, and Steve’s left trying to catch his breath like he hasn’t needed to since he climbed into Erskine’s machine.

Steve’s always been the little guy, looking for a fight, but now he’s not sure he has much fight left in him.

A penny may not be worth as much 60 years down the line, but it can still make a call. Heads or tails.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first foray into publishing fic and none of this would have happened without [em2mb](http://archiveofourown.org/users/em2mb/). Take that how you will, but I intend it with the deepest gratitude. I couldn’t ask for a better beta (my how the tables have turned), she’s the Bucky to my pre-serum Steve. Thanks for reading and you can find me [on Tumblr](http://frommybookbook.tumblr.com).


End file.
